- Cranberries are the canary in the mine for global warming.
- If the RDF Triple is a fairy tale, is reification the wicked witch? Possible beginning to new series on RDF.
- Snow in the Puget Sound area. We missed the ice rain bullet, ourselves.
- On The Golden Compass:
Earlier this fall, many Catholics began to receive e-mail messages warning of the “agenda” behind a “new Children’s movie out in December called ‘The Golden Compass.’ ” The film, these e-mails claimed, was intended to serve as bait for the novel on which it is based, the first in a fantasy trilogy collectively titled “His Dark Materials.” Kids intrigued by the film, the e-mails went on, would be tempted to read the trilogy and might thereby fall into the ideological clutches of its author, Philip Pullman, who seeks nothing less than “to bash Christianity and promote atheism.”
The messages had the breathless, marginally literate quality of rumors about spider eggs in bubble gum. Perhaps that’s why the controversy promptly earned itself a page at www.snopes.com, that venerable Internet clearing house for urban legends. Snopes lists this particular rumor as “true,” presumably because the e-mails use a few genuine, if cherry-picked, quotations from Pullman’s writings and press interviews. But that doesn’t keep the whole thing from being fundamentally ridiculous.
- This Tasmania writes on problems with invasive species and their destruction of native species on Tasmania’s Macquarie Island. An Alaskan island known as ‘rat island’ is facing the same problem, but with rats, not rabbits. However, efforts are underway to eradicate the rats though not everyone approves.
- Color me astonished. Six Apart sells LiveJournal to the Russians. So much for “in the neighborhood”.